Chisel vs. Pricking Iron

It took me far to long to realize that these two tools were not the same tool. Yes, pricking irons are more than just the expensive version of chisels. These two tools are used in a different ways even though they are both stitching aids.

Chisel:

This tool is meant to create holes for your stitching. When used, it needs to be punched all the way through the leather.

 

Pricking Iron:

This tool creates a guide that you later use when creating holes with an awl. The name is pretty appropriate. You’re not punching the iron through the leather, but only pricking the leather, leaving a mark on the surface of the leather.

So there’s both tools with their intended purpose, but it doesn’t seem like there is a consensus on which is better in the leatherworking community.

Here’s a pro/con list to help you decide which tool is right for you.

Chisel Review:

+ Cheap and Replaceable. I bought my set of chisels from leathercrafttools.com for a little over $30. I’ve had them for awhile and they are still working great. But, say I did drop one and chip off a tooth, $30 isn’t enough to send me into a panic.

+ Quick. This is also something that is debated. For me, using a chisel has always been quicker, but some say that they can use a pricking iron and awl with greater speed. I don’t doubt them, I just can’t. When using gussets on a design, I can definitely see this being the case. 

+ Easy to Learn. It doesn’t take long to figure a chisel out. Set it in your stitching grove, make sure it’s sitting straight, and hammer. It’s pretty easy. 

- Cheap.  As I mentioned earlier, chisels aren’t meant to last as long as pricking irons.

- Doesn’t Develop Skill with an Awl. This is really the worst part about it in my opinion. Like I mentioned with the gussets, there are just times that you need to use an awl. When you’re using a chisel, you won’t be getting much practice with an awl. I really suggest using a chisel on the work you are selling, while using an awl on pieces that you don’t plan on selling. You need the practice. Don’t let a chisel be a crutch.

Pricking Iron Review:

+ Durable. Pricking Irons are usually hand made and seldom need replaced. It’s a one time purchase.

+ More Controlled. I’ve heard this argued before, but will be honest and say that I am not 100% sold on this. The argument is that if you make a mistake with a chisel you’ve made a mistake all the way through the leather. With a pricking iron (and awl), you individually create each hole. I think the assumption is that one hole at a time gets more care than the six you make at a time with a chisel. I mess up with my awl way more than I do with my chisel though.

+ Looks Good in Your Instagram Posts. This is a running joke on the leather craft reddit, because pricking irons seem to find their way into the back ground of a lot of pictures… but they do look good. Go check out the subreddit if you haven’t already. I owe thanks to many people there for all they’ve taught me.

+ Develops a Skill. You can’t get around using an awl with a pricking iron, and that’s a good thing. For those who can use a pricking iron/awl really well (not me), there’s definitely a sense of pride and accomplishment that they have about it, and I don’t blame them.

- Expensive. Pricking irons are going to cost you about $200. That’s a lot for me.

My Verdict:

You’ve probably guessed by now, I don’t think pricking irons are worth it. But as I get more experience maybe that will change. I really respect people who can use a pricking iron well, but for the price I don’t suggest it, especially people who are new to the craft. As I mentioned, I got my chisel set for $30, they still work great, and I don’t think I will need to be replacing them any time soon. When I started using a chisel my stitching looked drastically better because the holes were consistent as opposed to the holes created by my mediocre awl skills.

If you’re new get the chisels, but make sure to practice with the awl on the side. If you really want a pricking iron, get some skill with the awl. Once you’ve got some skill, I say go for it.

Oh yeah, the overstitch wheel probably deserves mention because it serves a similar purpose. But then again… it doesn’t. I hate the thing.

Let me know if I missed a pro or con for either of these… or if I’ve horribly offended you because of your overstitch wheel love. 

Where I Went Wrong with Rivets

The second thing that I ever made was a purse for my wife. She had a cheap purse she’d bought from H&M. It had fallen apart after some use, but she still really liked the design and asked if I could make a new one. To be honest, I didn’t really know if I could make a new one but I figured why not try.

I was just beginning and didn’t have a lot of money, so I used the only leather I had ever bought to make it: an 8oz piece of Craftsman Oak. If you’re familiar with leather sizes, you know that is way too thick for a purse. So I tried my best to skive it down to about 5oz. Skiving is one of those things that takes a bit of skill though, so I took it slow and did the best I could. I’d say it turned out ok at best. 

I knew skiving was tricky, but I had never really tried to rivet before and it sounded easy. At this point the bag was mostly finished. I had stitched most of it  together and burnished my edges. One of the few things I had left was to rivet the straps on. So I punched my holes, placed in the rivets, and started hammering them closed using a rivet setter. And...

This is what smashed rivets look like.

They were horribly mangled. So mangled in fact that you can see it from a distance. I had spent all this time trying my best to make this bag good, only to have it ruined in about two minutes. I tried to remove them, but rivets aren’t meant to be removed. And after some searching on youtube there are tutorials to removing them, but it’s much harder to get them off than on. What I’m trying to say is riveting sounds easy, but just like everything else in leather working, there is a skill to it. Ruining your wife’s birthday gift is not a good thing, so here’s some tips for a happy marriage and a well set rivet.

1. Use an anvil. If you are using a rivet setter like the one to the right, they are also sold with anvils (for a little more). Anvils are nice for two reasons. First they provide a nice hard surface to hit the rivet on to. But when it comes to a small anvil, I think the more practical purpose is for setting double sided rivets. Some anvils come with rounded out dips in them to set the other side of the rivet in it. This way neither side of the rivet is damaged in the setting process.

2. This brings me to my second point: Rivet on a hard surface. I thought the small anvil I was using would suffice, but I was hammering with this small anvil on a wooden desk. The anvil would jump around when I hammered and leave dents in the other side of my rivet. Once I moved to a concrete floor this stopped happening because the surface was less bouncy and the anvil stayed in place.

3. Practice. I know this sounds obvious, but seriously rivets are inexpensive. Don’t be afraid to waste a few on a scrap piece of leather for the sake of saving a project. Do this especially if you are either trying rivets for the first time or trying a brand of rivets you have never used before. They might dent easier and require you to use less force. Or they might not fit into the rounded dips in your anvil as well as other brands and it may be more difficult for you to set them correctly.

4. Make sure your stem isn’t too long. If the leather you are using does not completely fill the space between the two caps, you run a good chance of messing up the rivet in the setting process. Instead of the stem closing around itself, it will slip and bend diagonally making it so your rivets don’t actually close and the caps no longer line up. There’s two easy fixes for having too long of stems. You can either cut them and shorten them to the correct length. Or you can do you best to make sure to come straight down on top of the rivet with you swing the hammer. If the force of your hammer doesn’t come from directly above, the rivet will slip though, so it’s just better to have the stem at the right length.

Luckily my wife loved her purse even with the obviously flawed rivets. She’s just nice like that and still wears it around today… even though those rivets are always staring back at me. I am happy to say that none of my rivets have looked that bad since, thanks to tips like these. As always, if I missed some tips let me know in the comments. 

Getting the Most Out of Cheap Leather

Craftsman Oak is the cheapest version of leather that Tandy sells. And it’s no secret that it’s rough, but that’s a good thing when you’re beginning. The low quality is why they are so cheap, and cheap leather is great leather to practice on.

But just because you receive it in rough shape doesn’t mean you can’t make the best of it. While Craftsman Oak is a far cry from say, Horween’s leather (which will cost you a heck of a lot more), you can still create beautiful pieces with it. It just takes a little more coaxing.

I used Craftsman Oak a lot when I was learning. And I started to notice similar problems with each of them, and eventually learned how to deal with those problems. Hopefully this list helps you create beautiful end products, even though you are still learning with cheap leather.

Problem #1: Holes, Scars, and Folds

Top side blemish.

Check for blemishes on the underside as well.

Solution: Any piece of cheap leather is going to have these defects, but these defects don’t  need to make their way into your project. If you’re creating something small like a wallet, it’s easy to cut around these defects no matter what cut of leather you purchased. If you are wanting to make something larger, like a bag, you need to get a bigger cut of leather. You’ll have a hard time finding enough space without blemishes on a smaller piece, even if it is technically enough leather for the project. When you’re inspecting the leather, prior to buying it, make sure there is enough distance between the blemishes to fit the pieces of your project.

Problem #2: Too Stiff

Solution: There are ways to lessen this, but just know you aren’t go to make an extremely stiff pieces of leather extremely flexible. It’s more like, it was once really stiff and now its just sort of stiff. Putting oil on the leather prior to sealing it with a wax cream will help loosen it up. There are a number of different oils you can use, but I like to use olive oil because I always have it around. Also, unlike some other oils, olive oil will not darken the leather too much.

Don’t be afraid to be generous with the oil. Depending on the leather, it will take a decent amount of oil to start seeing results. Just make sure you apply it evenly because it does darken the leather a small amount. Using a sponge is a great way to apply both oils and dyes.

Problem #3: Feels like Cardboard

This is the topside of two different pieces of leather. The one on the left looks as it should, while the one on the right almost looks like its the underside due to how coarse it is.

Solution: First of all don’t panic. I remember getting a piece of leather that I had shipped to my house (go in to the store if you can), and thinking that the top layer had been skived off somehow. It hadn’t, it was just insanely coarse. Go ahead and dye it just like you would any other piece of leather and then make sure to be generous when you apply the carnauba cream. You may have to give it a few coats, but you can get it looking healthy again.

If it still looks and feels coarse after applying a few coats of carnauba cream, you can also take your slicker/burnisher and buff the surface of the leather by running it quickly back and forth across the top of the leather. This will give it a shinier look.

Problem #4: Messy Underside

Neither of these would be considered high quality, but you can tell the one of the left definition has messier fibers. Be sure to matte down the fibers in both situations.

Solution: I thought way to long about how to get a joke out of that problem title, no luck. Anyway, on really nice pieces of leather none of the fibers on the underside will be sticking up, but on cheap pieces of leather that is not the case. Some craftsman oak cuts aren’t too bad, but then again there are some that are really bad. If that is the case, just take a slicker/burnishing tool and run it back and forth across the back of the leather with gum tragacanth to matte down the fibers. It won’t be as nice as a quality piece of leather and after some use the fibers will stick up a little, but it still makes a noticeable difference.

These are just some of the things I did to get more out of the craftsman oak leathers. Adding oils and waxes, cutting around blemishes, and matting down loose fibers really helped increase the quality of my early projects. But I know there are more tips out there on how to work with this kind of leather. If you’ve come up with any, or heard of any, share them in the comments below - they just might get added to this list and, even better, help everyone here. 

Where to Buy Leather When You're Just Starting

My First Experience Buying Leather

When I bought my first piece of leather, I was an idiot. Christmas had just ended and I had a little spending money to purchase the leather for my first project. So naturally, I opened up Google and typed in something like 'buy leather for leatherworking.' Tandy was the first search result. Once there I looked around their leathers and decided on a medium quality leather, because who wants to buy the crappy stuff. Finding a cut in my price range, I hit order, filled in my information and was done. I had successfully ordered my first piece of leather... sort of. The reality was I didn't even know what kind of leather I needed. I didn’t know which parts of the hide I needed (yup it matters… more than you’d think). I didn’t know what tannery to get my leather from, and didn't really even know that they used widely different processes. And then what the hell is chrome tanned anyways.

When the leather arrived it was perhaps the ugliest piece of leather I'd seen, and that's only been reinforced by my experience since. It was mangled, loaded with creases, bent, and the grain on the flesh side stuck out a good half inch. Since then I've learned a lot about purchasing leather, and have bought a lot cheaper pieces that are a lot better quality. So, now that I have a bit of experience under my belt, I wrote down some tips to help you not be an idiot too:

Buy cheap

Sometimes I get really excited about a project and dream big, which is great, except that it means I overlook how tough some of the details are. When you are new, you have to come to terms with the fact that you are going to make mistakes no matter how hard you try. Things you won’t even think of will go wrong… something weird like your brown dye coming out with a green sheen. Make your mistakes on cheap leather. There’s nothing worse than making an incorrect cut or screwing up the dying process on a piece of leather you just dropped $300 on. If you’ve got money to waste, feel free to waste it on a custom order from my shop, not on expensive mistakes.

Tandy is great for buying cheap leather.

Tandy Leather is a leather retailer for hobbyists located close to major cities in the US. Here is their website: tandyleather.com

I view Tandy in the same way that I view McDonalds. When I was in college, spending a bunch of time learning and had little money for anything, $3 meals were greatest thing known to man. But all good things must come to an end, especially if they will end you. And so I don’t eat McDonalds any more because I don’t want to die at 30. Tandy is great for learning - it’s great because you can leather extraordinarily cheap, but just know the leather is cheap for a reason, and one day you will have to mature and branch out to keep growing as a craftsman.

Here’s a few things to know when buying leather from Tandy.

1. Their cheapest leather is called Craftsman Oak. That’s the one you want. It will have scars on it, spots where the leather got mangled in the machine, poor grain, and maybe even some brands on it. All those defects knock down the price and make it great leather to learn with. 

2. Tandy is always having sales. I don’t think I’ve ever gone to Tandy and not seen a cut of their Craftsman Oak on sale. Sometimes it's the single shoulder, sometimes it's the side, sometimes it’s the belly, etc, but something is always on sale. As I write this, they have double shoulders on sale for $60. Look for those sales - just make sure it’s the right cut for what you are doing.

3. Craftsman Oak leathers aren’t from the same place. They grab the leather that doesn’t make the cut from different tanneries and lump them together and sell them as Craftsman Oak. As is the case with all leathers from different tanneries, they don’t dye the same, don’t burnish the same, and generally have a different rigidity. Most these things can be dealt with. However, when you are learning and one day burnishing is easy and the next it’s suddenly unworkable, it’s very hard to track your progress. That’s why I suggest buying a larger piece of leather (sides work for this). A bigger piece of leather will be enough for multiple projects, which gives you a consistent experience with the leather and better track your progress.

4. Any other leather at Tandy is generally overpriced. Tandy does offer higher quality leathers, but I don’t suggest buying them there. Once you feel comfortable that you won’t make many costly mistakes, it’s time to buy from a tannery that works with smaller customers.

5. Go in if you can. This is one of the really great things about Tandy. They are all over and if you live close to a big city there’s a good chance you can find a Tandy nearby. When you go in, you get to check out all the variables yourself. You get to see for yourself how big the piece of leather is, which actually varies a lot. You can see how tough or how supple it is. You get to see what the gain on the back looks like. You get the idea.

6. If you cannot go in, or you are really trying to keep things inexpensive use Tandy Leather Outlet: https://www.tandyleatheroutlet.com. Note the outlet at the end. This is different than Tandy’s online store. It’s all the leather they couldn’t sell. And it’s incredibly cheap. I once bought a really ugly pre-dyed side of leather for $30. Sure it was ugly but I got so much experience out of it. Here’s something I made with it early on.

And that’s it.

Buying cheap leather is the best choice when you are starting off and Tandy is a really good place to find it. Hopefully these tips help you get the most out of your experience at Tandy. But even with the tips I know that navigating buying leather for the first time can be intimidating, so if you want any help at all just let me know by dropping your question in the comments below or sending me an email. I also know that I probably didn’t cover all the questions that you have about buying leather. What’s your one question about buying leather?

As I mentioned above, I still have a lot more tips for buying leather for people new to leatherwork that I will be writing about over the new couple of weeks. I post every Tuesday and Thursday, but if you want to make sure not to miss these posts, I encourage you to sign up for our newsletter.